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Google Competitors & Contributors

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Let's face it, Google is the best search engine hands down. I love it, you love it... and the only reason that we might use something else like Yahoo or Dogpile is if we just absolutely cannot find what we are looking for on Google.

It's no mystery that Google, Yahoo and MSN are all huge competitors, with Cuil being the newest addition (read the press release here). Cuil has constantly been referred to as the "Google Killer." Just try Googling "google killer" and take a look at the very first natural result ;). It even asks you if you'd like to "See results for cuil". The only one problem with these tools is that there is not enough human interaction. Their ranking systems are good, but only good to a point. It would be daunting and I suppose downright impossible for employees to approve every single website submitted or crawled.

This doesn't mean that there is nothing that we can do to better Google for everyone. Sites like Wikipedia, DMOZ and eHow (just to name a few) have already made a huge dent in the quality of Google's results. Most recently hengine has debuted and is trying to get in the game of contributing to Google. What all of these websites have in common is that they are human generated (not crawled) and human-filtered for quality. These websites don't intend on competing with Google, they're about helping people and bettering the internet.

So in a sense, Google does have another layer of quality assurance besides PageRank, and it's the human element from contributing websites. In our own goal of submitting our websites to contributors for our own SEO and marketing purposes, especially the highly regarded DMOZ directory, we are in fact contributing to Google and making the internet better, but we can certainly do more.

There is another side that's more than meets the eye. Some people believe that Google has a much larger future. I am of course talking about the Google Operating System that will essentially be fully virtual or online. Google has been around for a long time now and they are GROWING, getting smarter, building more storage and getting faster. Read more here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/ and http://www.kottke.org/04/04/google-operating-system.

Google tracks the way we search, the way we surf, the way we shop, the way we socialize, etc. They have a mountain of knowledge. Quite honestly, if Google doesn't share information with the government then they probably have a better understanding of human behavior/patterns than the government.

Google's Biggest Competitors:

Quite honestly, this might not be Yahoo or MSN at all, but Windows and Macintosh Operating Systems.

Google's Biggest Contributors:

You, me, everyone. Every time you or I use Google or any Google service, they're tracking extensively as much as they can. Knowledge is power.

Besides other obvious competitors (Ask, AOL, etc.), I would love to hear more about fairly unknown competitors and contributors and your feelings and thoughts about the future of Google and what I believe to be very important: its human interaction.

19 Comments

I think Cuil's attempt to dethrone Google can definitely be classified as failed at this point. That much was pretty much clear the day it was launched last summer. The verdict's still out on Bing, but it seems unlikely. However, the response to Bing from the search community and consumers is more positive than most people anticipated, so who knows?

Well, it's not that cuil is not going to happen, it is there, it is happening and it's never going away. Just because they're not "killing" Google doesn't mean that they're not doing something and making money.

I just found it incredibly rude (seeing as some of them were coming from Google), tasteless and quite honestly stupid to come out as a "Google Killer", sort of "Bite the hand that feeds you". Although to be fair, I think blogs played it up far more than cuil themselves.

Technically speaking, there's nothing wrong with cuil, but their angle was all wrong, instead of trying to take Google head on, why not just try and contribute to the internet and to people, that's the side I've chosen.

Unless 2012 really is the end, Google will stay on top for a foreseeable future ;).

I would like to use optimism; I really would, but I just don't see it. Agreed, Cuil was overhyped. Still, I've tried using the engine quite a few times and I just don't seem to find what I want. Compared to the results in other SERPS it seems off to me.

Great article. Cuil claims to have a larger index than any other search engines so far. Moreover Cuil doesn't save the user's search information or IP addresses which is a significant benefit. But it is finally only Google that most people opt, I believe.

It's not news, but of course there are cameras everywhere now. Example A:

You go to the grocery store, you're trip is probably filmed almost in it's entirety;

street cameras, business cameras, personal video cameras and cell phones, police in-car cameras, security cameras inside and out of the grocery store, even parking lot cameras or shopping mall cameras by the people that lease the property where stores are located

am I missing anything? And then of course tracking us through our cell phones isn't new, but what surprised me that I didn't think about before was the fact that they can tap into conversations or just listen in over your cell through the microphone (where you speak into) even if your phone isn't turned on.

Also, animals are micro-chipped commonly now and believe that there are some services that will microchip babies and children. But, I think it might become mandatory for US citizens, for babies to be micro-chipped after birth with their social and address and so on, which parents will need to update by law if they move and it'll play into the DMV and so on too.

Of course our money is already tracked.

Anyways, sorry about that. The Lost Agency just got me in a fun paranoid mood, although it's just the truth as technology continues to advance.

The new name for live (but a 'different search engine') seems to be making resonable progress in taking back some of the marketshare, and seems to be making an impact on SEO's (just look at sphinn frontpage). Admittedly has come under fire for questionable tactics such as being forced as the default search provider.

Edit : also, as much as everyone around here hates Jason Calicanis, i've always though Mahalo was the best human-controlled 'search engine'

I both agree and disagree with parts of your statement about Google being Microsoft and OS X's biggest competitor - I think you are right in the sense that google seems to be encroaching on territory which is traditionally left to the operating system, but it's really the natural evolution of the web...people have been discussing, anticipating, and making it happen for years. Google just happens to be in the best place to make it happen.

The new name for live (but a 'different search engine') seems to be making resonable progress in taking back some of the marketshare, and seems to be making an impact on SEO's (just look at sphinn frontpage). Admittedly has come under fire for questionable tactics such as being forced as the default search provider."

It's kind of a sad truth really, and I personally think it's mostly, if not all psychological; "Oh Bing, that sounds new and Web 2.0". Same thing with Twitter, although I don't deny that I like Twitter, I'm just happy it was adopted by more business and professional minded people early on.

I think the biggest thing to look at for the future of Google is Wave. I wrote an entry with my thoughts on Wave ( awaiting approval maybe if I say I love you Rebecca it will get put up in UGC faster.) Anyways Google already has an OS. Shout out to my wonderful G1! The thing I do enjoy about it is, when I do a hard reset on my phone Google servers have my contact information, etc. backed up. So a cold boot from a factory reset it just sync's up with the Google servers and I am set. So what you are talking about is already in play, just on a much smaller scale. I see Google being better than Microsoft/Apple because they almost always use Open Source. Using Open Source is a 2 fold bonus; 1st less work, 2nd better results for the user. It is less work on Google if they use open source because then they can go to I/O for instance and give developers beta, etc. and let them help in the creation process. Instead of keeping everything in-house like microsoft/macintosh, you spend less money on labor, etc. Open source is better results for the user because a larger crowd of people can make apps for it. Better system tools, better programs, the possibilities are much more wide and broad than your typical O.S. You make it much more customizable for the user.

Google since day 1 has been about the user. Everything they seem to do is about the user, that is the key reason I believe Microsoft/Macs have fallen off. Is it really about the user or just making money?

I view the way that Google uses this knowledge as beneficial to society as a whole, with the tools that they provide. Gmail has completely changed the way I use email, their Calendar is unmatched in usefulness, and as soon as Sprint gets an Android phone I'll be in line to get rid of my BlackBerry.

Does this community fear any of Google's tactics thus far? I know they amass quite a bit of data on users, but again, to me it's useful. I have plenty of IT friends who equate Google to "big brother" and won't use their products for any reason other than testing.